Mr. Michael O'Flynn:

No, we have built many apartments in Dublin and Cork and are building them at the moment. Apartment building is very challenging at this moment in time because we have such viability issues that small changes will not make any difference. The Government has brought in various initiatives, which are very plausible. The simple fact is that as we do not have a viable apartment business where we can build apartments and sell them, they need to be subsidised. How to deal with that situation and what amount of subsidy is required? The subsidy is quite large. There are schemes like croí cónaithe and Project Tosaigh but the reality is that we need a suite of measures to make apartments more viable. We probably are talking about not having any VAT on apartments. We probably will need to take VAT off a lot of the chain as well.

I reiterate that we have a serious viability issue. We need to look at densities. We need to look at how we can make densities more viable for city living. Apartments are very expensive. We have a very highly regulated apartment design instruction, which I do not suggest we should change. When all of those situations exist then the dial cannot be changed overnight. It will be very difficult to change the dial by any one measure. It will need several measures, including serious subsidisation.

I am loath to mention tax breaks because people will start talking about profit and developers. The reality is that we, as a business, need viable product. If we have viable product then we can develop. If we cannot get viable product then we cannot finance it and if we cannot finance it then it will not happen. We need to look at an open book approach to apartment costs and delivery, and all of us get around the table and accept these are the costs, how can we make them work and how can it be funded.

We need more State funding involved in financing and we need cheaper financing. I cannot identify one issue that will be the silver bullet; it is a whole range of issues.